The Methodist Experience in America Volume I: A History

By Kenneth E. Rowe, Dr. Russell E. Richey and Jean Miller Schmidt

Beginning in 1760, this comprehensive history charts the growth and development of the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren church family up and through the year 2000. 


Extraordinarily well-documented study with elaborate notes that will guide the reader to recent and standard literature on the numerous topics, figures, developments, and events covered.  The volume is a companion to and designed to be used with THE METHODIST EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA: A SOURCEBOOK, for which it provides background, context and interpretation.

Contents include:
Launching the Methodist Movements 1760-1768
Structuring the Immigrant Initiatives 1769-1778
Making Church 1777-1784
Constituting Methodism 1784-1792
Spreaking Scriptural Holiness 1792-1816
Snapshot I- Methodism in 1816: Baltimore 1816
Building for Ministry and Nuture 1816-1850s
Dividing by Mission, Ethnicity, Gender, and Vision 1816-1850s
Dividing over Slavery, Region, Authority, and Race 1830-1860s
Embracing the War Cause(s) 1860-1865
Reconstructing Methodism(s) 1866-1884
Snapshot II- Methodism in 1884: Wilker-Barre, PA 1884
Reshaping the Church for Mission 1884-1939
Taking on the World 1884-1939
Warring for World Order and Against Worldliness Within 1930-1968
Snapshot III- Methodism in 1968: Denver 1968
Merging and Reappraising 1968-1984
Holding Fast/Pressing On 1984-2000

A wide-angled narrative that attends to religious life at the local level, to missions and missionary societies , to justice struggles, to camp and quarterly meetings, to the Sunday school and catechisms, to architecture and worship, to higher education, to hospitals and homes, to temperance, to deaconesses and to Methodist experiences  in war and in peace-making
A volume that attends critically to Methodism’s dilemmas over and initiatives with regard to race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and relation to culture
A documentation and display of  the rich diversity of the Methodist experience
A retelling of the contests over and evolution of Methodist/EUB organization, authority, ministerial orders and ethical/doctrinal emphases

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Release date: Aug 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781426719370

Kenneth E. Rowe

Kenneth E. Rowe, a retired clergy member of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, the premier bibliographer of American United Methodism, was for 31 years Methodist Librarian and Professor of Church History at Drew University, as well as Professor of Church History in the Theological and Graduate Schools. He is also Emeritus Professor of Church History and Methodist Archives Librarian at Drew University Theological School in Madison, New Jersey.

Book preview

THE

METHODIST

EXPERIENCE IN

AMERICA

A HISTORY

Volume I

Russell E. Richey,

Kenneth E. Rowe,

and

Jean Miller Schmidt

ABINGDON PRESS

NASHVILLE

THE METHODIST EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA

VOLUME 1

A HISTORY

Copyright © 2010 by Abingdon Press

All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to Abingdon Press, P.O. Box 801, 201 Eighth Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37202-0801 or [e-mail].

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Richey, Russell E.

Methodist experience in America / Russell E. Richey, Kenneth E. Rowe, and Jean Miller Schmidt.

p. cm.

ISBN 9781426719370 1. United Methodist Church (U.S.)—History. 2. Methodist Church—United States—History. 3. United States—Church history. I. Rowe, Kenneth E. II. Schmidt, Jean Miller. III. Title.

BX8235.R534 2010

287.0973—dc22

2010023441

All scripture quotations unless noted otherwise are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Journal of Thomas Rankin, 1773–1778 is from the United Methodist Archives and History Center, Drew University, Madison, New Jersey.

Excerpts from the James Meacham Journals, 1788–1797, located in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collection Library, Duke University.

Target: Denver, text by Paige Carlin, pictures by George P. Miller, Together (March 1969): 18-24. Used by permission of The United Methodist Publishing House.

Letters of Francis Asbury to Freeborn Garrettson, Sept. 2, 1785, Sept. 1786, are from Wesleyan University Library, Special Collections & Archives.

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

With gratitude to

Merle

James

Steve

CONTENTS

---

Preface

A Quick Overview

Dynamics in Methodist Evolution

The Narrative Line

Using This Narrative with the Sourcebook

Chapter I. Launching the Methodist Movements:

   1760-68

Pietism

Colonial Inroads

Otterbein and Boehm

Of the Origin of the United Brethren in Christ

Methodist Beginnings in America

Of the Rise of Methodism (so called) in Europe and America

Early Leaders

Pietist Communities

Chapter II. Structuring the Immigrant Initiatives:

   1769-78

Occupying Canaan under Wesleyan Order

Frontier Challenges

Order and Freedom

Conquest by Conferencing

Discipline: Rankin and Asbury

Tensions and Controversies as Revolution Looms

Wesley and Revolution

Collaborators, Loyalists, Pacifists, Persecuted, Patriots

American Methodism

Chapter III. Making Church: 1777-84

Declarations of Independence

Fluvanna Schism

Moses and Aaron

Wandering toward Prerogative?

Revival through Quarterly Meetings

Crossing Jordan: Covenant and Connectionalism

Tensions in Canaan

Transferring the Mantle (Ordinations and Order)?

At Full Liberty to Follow the Scriptures and the Primitive Church

Preparations for a Christmas Conference

Chapter IV. Constituting Methodisms: 1784-92

1784 and All That

Otterbein: Baltimore and Environs

Praying in the New Order: Gender and Gentility

Liberty

Biracial but Segregated

Itinerating into Order and Disorder

The Council

General Conference

Schism

Constituting

Chapter V. Spreading Scriptural Holiness:

    1792-1816

Spirituality and Order: United Brethren, Evangelical Association, Methodist Episcopal

Introduction and Preamble: To the Gentle Reader [Evangelical Association]

Methodists: Conferencing the Continent

Conferences Politicized: Toward a Delegated General Conference

The Teaching Office

Camp and Quarterly Meetings

Rhythms of Methodist Spirituality

Racializing the Church

Transitions

Snapshot I. Methodism in 1816 : Baltimore

Methodism in Black and White

Divided by Languages

Defined by Calendar

A Quarterly Church

The Weekly Calendar

Institutions

Coda

Chapter VI. Building for Ministry and Nurture: 1816-50s

Interring Asbury: Establishing a New Order

Nathan Bangs: Transitioning the Teaching Office

An American Methodist Voice and Identity

The Book Concern

Magazine, Papers, Tracts, Sunday School Literature

Parsonages and Home Altars vs. Classes and Circuits

Worship and Formality

The Sunday School: Background

Sunday Schools and Catechisms

The Missionary Impulse

Phoebe Worrall Palmer and Tuesday Meetings

Class Meetings and New Denominational Order

Experiments: Liberal and Ministerial Education

Colleges: The Founding Era

Theological Education, Croakers, and Semi-Centennial Sermons

Chapter VII. Dividing by Mission, Ethnicity, Gender,

   and Vision: 1816-50s

Division: Ordering and Disordering

Authority: Local vs Connectional

Race and Antislavery

Language Lines

Women in Ministry

Native American Missions

Mission to the Slaves

Slave Catechisms

Missions across Boundaries: Domestic and Foreign

Contest over Presiding Elders

Broadening the Agenda

Methodist Protestants

Methodist Protestant Brief Historical Preface

Not an End but a New Beginning to Division     

Chapter VIII. Dividing over Slavery, Region, Authority, and Race: 1830-60

A Sectional Church

A Divided Church Divides the Nation

A Wesleyan Methodist Connection

General Conference of 1844

Division

Legislative Posturing

Of the Organization of The Methodist Episcopal Church, South

Border Warfare

New Antislavery Churches

The Lay Voice (Again)

Chapter IX. Embracing the War Cause(s): 1860-65

Patriotism, Confederate Style

Chaplains and Army Missionaries

Reaffirming an MECS Identity

Northern War Fervor

Union Chaplains: Ordained and Lay

Northern Methodist Women and the War

Homes for Children and the Aged: A Wesleyan Recovery

Orphanages

Homes for the Aged

Black Annual Conferences and the MEC's Southern Mission

Cross and Flag

Buildings for National Churches

Chapter X. Reconstructing Methodism(s): 1866-84

The Centenary Jubilee

Lay Representation: A New Partnership

The Organizational Revolution

Women's Work in the Church

Women's Missionary Societies

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

Woman in the Pulpit

Theological Education

Camp Meeting and Classroom Accountability

Nurturing Members

Methodism: Intercultural, Fraternal, Ecumenical

Competing Black Methodisms

Conclusion and Transition

Snapshot II. Methodism in 1884 : Wilkes-Barre,

   Pennsylvania

The City

The Methodists

New Church Buildings, 1877, 1885

Pastoral Leadership

Calendar, Program, and Order: The Social Congregation

Public Worship

Stewardship: Financial and Personal

Coda

Chapter XI. Reshaping the Church for Mission:

   1884-1939

Laity Rights for Women

New Ministries for Men and Youth

Central Conferences and the Ordering of Missions

Women's Home Missionary Societies

Wesleyan Service Guild

Missions to Korea

Asian American Methodists

Rethinking Missions

Social Holiness to Social Gospel

Deaconesses

Methodist Hospitals

Institutionalizing Social Christianity: MFSS and the Social Creed

Chapter XII Taking On the World? 1884-1939

Conflicts: Social, Economic, Racial, Theological

Labor, Round One

Holiness Exodus

Toward a Socialized Church?

Temperance and Prohibition

Radicalism and Reaction: The Red Scare of the 1920s and 1930s

Methodist Fundamentalism

Southern Methodist Women and Racial Reform

Renewed Efforts on Behalf of Ordination of Women

From Spontaneity to Formalism in Public Worship

Environments for Worship, Education, and Fellowship

Missions in War and Peace

Race and Reunion

Chapter XIII. Warring for World Order and against

   Worldliness Within: 1939-68

Methodism and a New World Order

The Holocaust, Japanese Internment, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki

Council of Bishops, Judicial Council, Conferences, Agencies

Judicial Council

Annual Conferences

Administrative Agencies

Jurisdictioned Church

The Central Jurisdiction

Methodism vs. Its Own Segregation

Methodists in the National Campaign against and for Segregation

Slow Transitions

Women's Organizations and the Pursuit of Clergy Rights for Women

Full Clergy Rights for Women

The Methodist Youth Fellowship and the Methodist Student Movement

The Evangelical United Brethren Church

Worship: EUBC and Methodist

Methodist Liturgical Legacies

United Brethren Worship

Evangelical Church Worship

Worship in The Evangelical United Brethren Church, 1946-68

Environments for Worship

Cold and Korean Wars

Social Activism and Red Scare

The 1968 Union and Other Ecumenical Projects

Mission Churches Request Autonomy

Snapshot III. Methodism in 1968: Denver

A Legacy in Its Name and Architecture

Renewal through Social Ministries

The Weekly Program

A Calendar of Outreach and Mission

Calendaring Change

Coda: US United Methodism and Mainline Denominationalism

Chapter XIV Merging and Reappraising: 1968-84

From Jurisdiction to Caucus and Commission

African Americans in United Methodism

The New Church and War

Union Homework: Ethical, Organizational, and Doctrinal

New Organizations to Empower Women

Homosexuality: Cause and Caucus

Asian Americans and the Quest for Place

Latino Self-Determination: Familia and Fiesta

The Voices of Native Americans

Care and Liability in an Age of Medicare and Medicaid

Divorce and Abortion

Divorce

Abortion

Good News: The Formation of a Shadow Connection or Church?

Spiritual Resources, Liturgical Norms, and Inclusive Language

Chapter XV. Holding Fast/Pressing On: 1984-2000

Doctrine Defined and Tested

The Teaching Office

Ministries to/for/by the Oldest and Newest Americans

Native Americans

Hispanics

Korean Americans

Abortion: Protecting Life, but Whose?

Homosexuality: Reconciliation, Transformation, or Schism?

Theologizing Left and Right

United Methodism's Other Ecumenical Fronts

A Sacramental Church?

Holy Communion

Baptism

Hymnal and Worship Books

Women Get the Last Word

Abbreviations

Notes

Index

PREFACE

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This volume is a companion to our Methodist Experience in America: A Sourcebook, already published (as MEA II). We crafted MEA I and II together, selecting our documents first, endeavoring to encompass as much of the American Methodist experience as possible, and now writing this narrative over against the documents. The overall structure of this volume, MEA I, follows the sixfold periodization and organization of documents in MEA II. At three of the important transition years, 1816, 1884, and 1968, we take snapshots of Methodism in community. The locale for 1816 is Baltimore; for 1884 is Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; and for 1968 is Denver. In the snapshots we provide the rationale for these three exhibitions of local Methodism.

A Quick Overview

Our three snapshots at 1816, 1884, and 1968 capture important transitional points in the Methodist movement. They also invite glimpses into three distinct Methodist phases that this volume depicts: a Pietist, a nurturing, and an advocating. Methodism features/featured all three—piety, nurture, and advocacy—in every period but, we think, has tended to accent one.

We depict early Methodism in both its United Brethren and its Wesleyan expressions as mediating distinctive practices of the international Pietist movement. Featuring itinerant evangelizing, revivalistic preaching, dramatic conversions, and lively testimony, early Methodism vocalized its religious seriousness, its piety. To be sure, it made provision for nurture in classes, and it showed unusual courage in antislavery advocacy, but grounded both in its convictions about the universality of grace and the imperative to save all from the wrath to come. Iconic for this phase of Methodism were emotional love feasts, revivalistic quarterly conferences, and promoted camp meetings.

A century later, Methodism was consumed by various nurturing tasks. In age-graded Sunday schools, through its widely read Advocates, Berean lessons, magazines, and books, in its numerous colleges, on the mission field, and in Freedmen's Aid, post–Civil War Methodism (particularly northern Methodism) cared for the enculturation of Christians, the cultivation of family religion, and the suffusing of society with Christian values. In the interest of home and family protection, Methodism advocated temperance, Sabbath observance, and increasingly a host of other social reforms. It presumed that society could be Christianized and that culture could accommodate Methodist piety and practice. Iconic for this phase of Methodism were the international lesson, the Akron Plan Sunday school facility, station churches, and religious life centered on the Sabbath.

By its third century, Methodism put a premium on advocacy. Its icons were the caucus, convention-center annual conferences, and eventually digital and Web exhibition of commitment, cause, and concern. The church gathered but also fragmented by ethnic identity, sexual orientation, and ideological concern. Conceiving of itself as global, United Methodism launched short-term missions in every direction. Northerners went south, southerners went north; U.S. groups went to Latin America, local churches worked near and far on Habitat houses. Piety and nurture could be had in retreats, modules, or packages, DISCIPLE Bible studies, and Walks to Emmaus.

Methodism defined its mission in these three epochs in interesting fashion. In its first Discipline, The Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) Americanized the answer to Wesley's query, What may we reasonably believe to be God's Design in raising up the Preachers called Methodists? to read: To reform the Continent, and to spread scriptural Holiness over these Lands (Sources 1785a). Looking back from the vantage of the 1866 Centenary, distinguished editor and historian Abel Stevens nicely captured the import of the 1785 ambitions to evangelize and reform the entire continent. He said,

Though American Methodism was many years without a distinct missionary organization, it was owing to the fact that its whole organization was essentially a missionary scheme. It was, in fine, the great Home Mission enterprise of the north American continent, and its domestic work demanded all its resources of men and money.¹

By the 1880s, Methodism in its various denominational expressions reshaped mission into connectionally ordered, well-led, and amply financed foreign and home missionary societies. And Methodist women mounted, staffed, and resourced their own. If mission had been initially what Methodism was, by the late nineteenth century, mission was what Methodism did, and did robustly and organizationally. By the end of the twentieth century, many United Methodists collapsed mission to the first statement made in the Discipline under Part V, Organization and Administration, The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Local churches provide the most significant arena through which disciple-making occurs.² Mission, initially Methodism's very being, became its order and eventually a point of advocacy.

Piety, nurture, and advocacy belong together, and the three Methodist moments put the emphasis differently. Early Methodism, a preaching movement, preached its nurture and preached its commitments. Late–nineteenth-century Methodism, a teaching church, taught its piety and its social concerns. Late–twentieth-century Methodism, increasingly a worshiping or sacramental church, ritualized and packaged spirituality and formation. The challenge for the church, in any period, we suppose, is to hold the three together effectively. Piety, nurture, and advocacy; word, order, and sacrament; the prophetic, royal, and priestly offices—they do belong together.

Their belonging together and mutually reinforcing one another are treated in the numbered chapters. We begin with the several independent, relatively spontaneous implantings of Pietist practices. We trace the reinforcing of and unfolding of this missionary enterprise, note how the American Revolution permitted its rapid indigenization, and then follow American Methodism's efforts to be a church in and for the new nation.

Dynamics in Methodist Evolution

The peculiarities of Methodism's entry into and spread across American society have produced tensions and paradoxes that it has held together and/or lived between. The following narrative exhibits those tensions at various points, and we assume that one or more may well structure the courses or lectures of faculty using our volumes.³ The tensions, some characterizing the movement as a whole, others marking life on an individual or grassroots level, include

a vital piety confident of God's providential and governing care and of grace-enabled free will and moral agency (Arminianism),

law, discipline, human responsibility, and self-control and also self-direction and liberty, through prevenient and free grace in conversion and in living the Christian life,

the letter (rules, works, fruits) and the Spirit (testimony),

authority vested in bishop, presiding elder, and preacher-in-charge and lay empowerment and lay offices (formal and informal),

centralized decision making in conference and license to improvise, experiment, and appoint on the circuit, in missions, and on frontiers,

an ordered, even communal Christian life (class) and openness to emotional expression and innovations in praxis (love feast),

community (conference) and individual expression (free will),

love of God and love of neighbor, individual and social holiness,

expectations of holiness and perfection that pressed toward spiritual elitism and preaching of a universal atonement that embraced the human family,

white male domination of office and decision making and a gospel of universalism that transcended lines drawn by race, language, gender, culture, and ethnicity,

the war against sin within and against the world and Calvinism without,

rules and practices against worldliness and a transformative impulse,

a commitment to conform (to Large Minutes, Wesleyanism, the Discipline) and an independent, Americanizing streak, a license to poach and borrow,

an evangelical catholic spirit and a highly competitive denominational Methodist triumphalism.

The Narrative Line

In charting the explosive growth and multiple divisions that Methodism experienced in living out these tensions, this volume follows central developments in the Methodist Episcopal, Methodist, and United Methodist experience. We attend as appropriate to the UBC, EA and EC, MPC, and MECS; to movements now distinct denominations— AMEC, AMEZC, CMEC, and the several holiness churches—and to missions and other aspects of the larger Wesleyan story. We have endeavored to incorporate women's and minority, especially African American, experience as much as possible into the narrative rather than separate such into subplots. This has proved tricky, especially when we reach the complexities of the twentieth century, and we need to concede here that we do not have a single conceptual maneuver in terms of which to achieve integration and inclusion. We have endeavored, nevertheless, to tell a Methodist story, recognizing its complexities, conflicts, richness, and texture.

Readers in the several Methodist and Wesleyan denominations and in United Methodism outside the U.S. should be alerted that the MEA set focuses on the U.S.— America in popular parlance. We made the decision to delimit our attention and selections in this manner with a view to primary users and the assumption that Methodists in other contexts need materials in their own linguistic-cultural tongue. We believe that U.S. United Methodists need as full a view of their story as possible, including attention to predecessor denominations, the experience of women, the church at the local level, Methodism's ethnic and racial diversity, our theological and ideological conflicts, and the sagas of unity. We allude, therefore, to missions and the increasing global reach of United Methodism but stay with the American story. We also share the conviction argued persuasively in An Introduction to World Methodism by Kenneth Cracknell and Susan J. White that, despite Wesleyanism's global fragmentation, Methodism divides into two broad streams and the Methodist experience in British and American contexts establishes two quite distinct traditions.⁴ In MEA we treat the spring of that latter stream.

Using This Narrative with the Sourcebook

We have developed the two-volume MEA set—and it is a set—as texts for the United Methodist history course, the course required for U.S. United Methodist candidates for ministry. We reference selections from MEA II, the Sourcebook, throughout this narrative as (Sources) with a date or date with letter. The date or date-with-letter guides the reader to the appropriate selection. In the allusions here to MEA II, this volume provides some comment, contextualizing, interpretation, and explanation for individual documents as is appropriate to the flow of the narration.

The periodization approximates that which we selected for the Sourcebook. In addition we indicate in the table of contents and in each chapter title the period covered. Honoring the indicated periodization means that we return again and again to certain topics, for instance, organizational developments, pressures for democratization, women's roles, and race relations. However, certain themes or topics that extend through the time frames covered by several chapters seemed to us to be better treated in a single discussion rather than chopped up into several chapters. We call attention therefore to the subheadings that, in several instances, target a discussion that extends beyond the time frame of the chapter. Note, for instance, the discussion of education (Sunday schools and colleges) in chapter 6, of missions in 7, of orphanages and homes in 9, of hospitals and deaconesses in 11, of worship, ecumenism, autonomous churches, and the Judicial Council in 13, and of divorce in 14. In these sections, we provide background to an important development and/or trace it beyond the indicated temporal boundaries of the chapter.

This narrative and MEA II, the Sourcebook, may serve those teaching and studying evangelism, mission, polity, and theology and provide background material for our denominational kindred in African American, Holiness, and Pentecostal churches. For users beyond the UMC and beyond the UMC history courses, we call special attention in MEA II to the MEA document index, which guides readers to documents by nineteen major categories, including African American, Episcopacy, Missions, Polity, and Women.

As another special feature of this volume, we include historical prefaces from the first Disciplines of the United Brethren, Methodist Episcopal, Evangelical Association, Methodist Protestant, and Methodist Episcopal, South, denominations. Each preface sets forth formally and concisely the new movement's originating impulse and self-understanding. At an early stage in our planning we hoped to include the prefaces as well from some of the churches (African American, Holiness, Pentecostal), now independent, that share early chapters of our common history. Space considerations oblige us to limit ourselves here to prefaces from United Methodist predecessor denominations. We can make those others available in digital format and may explore doing so in an MEA folder on the websites of the UMC General Commission on Archives and History (GCAH) and/or our schools. The availability on the GCAH site of a two-hundred-page online version of the Kenneth E. Rowe and now Christopher J. Anderson United Methodist Studies: Basic Bibliographies makes the inclusion of such here unnecessary.⁵

We should acknowledge that the MEA Narrative and Sourcebook presume the availability and use of other Methodist resources and have been shaped calculating the respective place that our volumes will occupy in the overall scheme of denominational formation. In particular, we have assumed prior treatment of the Wesleys and early British Methodism in Richard P. Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists. The MEA set has been shaped also with the presumption that readers will have in hand the standards for other United Methodist required courses—the current edition of Thomas Edward Frank, Polity, Practice, and the Mission of The United Methodist Church; Rex Matthews, Timetables of History for Students of Methodism; Theodore Runyon, The New Creation: John Wesley's Theology Today; and the two volumes of Thomas A. Langford, Practical Divinity, the second volume providing the rich theological fare that we have consequently omitted. We presume as well ready access to other standard Methodist studies items: Scott J. Jones, United Methodist Doctrine: The Extreme Center; Ted A. Campbell, Methodist Doctrine: The Essentials; Walter Klaiber and Manfred Marquardt, Living Grace: An Outline of United Methodist Theology; Karen B. Westerfield Tucker, American Methodist Worship; W. Harrison Daniel, Historical Atlas of the Methodist Movement; and our own Perspectives on American Methodism.⁶

The authors express appreciation to The United Methodist Publishing House for its patience with us in the slow production of this set and thank the UMPH, Abingdon Press, and Kingswood Books for permission to reproduce ideas, notes, phrasing, and occasionally more extended discussion from and to draw upon our previous individual or collaborative UMPH publications:

Grace Sufficient: A History of Women in American Methodism, 1760–1939

United Methodism in America: A Compact History

United Methodism at Forty: Looking Back, Looking Forward

Marks of Methodism: Theology in Ecclesial Practice

The Methodist Conference in America: A History

Questions for the Twenty-first Century Church

Episcopacy in the Methodist Tradition: Perspectives and Proposals

Doctrine in Experience: A Methodist Theology of Church and Ministry

We also appreciate the support of our several institutions, their deans, and their libraries and their librarians.

Jean Miller Schmidt, Iliff School of Theology

Kenneth E. Rowe, The Theological School, Drew University

Russell E. Richey, Candler School of Theology, Emory University

CHAPTER I

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LAUNCHING THE METHODIST MOVEMENTS:

1760–68

Where does one start the story of United Methodism? With the formative experiences in the Susanna and Samuel Wesley home? Or with John and Charles Wesley in Georgia in the 1730s? Or with John's Aldersgate experience? Or with George White-field's American tours and the First Great Awakening? Or with competitive spontaneous beginnings in the 1760s through Robert Strawbridge in Maryland, through William Otterbein and Martin Boehm in the middle colonies, and through Barbara Heck, Philip Embury, and Thomas Webb in New York? Or with the roots of the several evangelical movements in Pietism?

Pietism

The story of United Methodism requires a wide perspective. Pietism, because it underlay or affected the several Methodist movements, provides such a canvas, and William Otterbein (1726–1813)¹ will first claim our attention, as he does in MEA I (Sources 1760). Pietism was a transatlantic, transconfessional, diffuse religious reform impulse that sought to sustain the authentic witness of the faith but that in so doing defined itself initially over against orthodoxy and later over against aspects of the Enlightenment. The faith so preserved differed. Pietist or Pietist-like assumptions, beliefs, mores, and communal structures typified the patterns of life and thought espoused by its Lutheran pioneers, Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705) and August Hermann Francke (1663–1727); by the Moravians; by Roman Catholic Jansenists; by the Hasidic Jews; by late Puritanism; by British evangelicalism (Anglican and Presbyterian); and by the panoply of colonial revivalism.² Diversely expressed, the movement named itself diversely. In the North American context it bore the identity of evangelicalism or revivalism.

Pietist and Pietist-like movements characteristically emphasized

experimental religion, locating the religious impulse in the heart (will and affections);

both consciousness and expression of the heart's commitments (conversion and testimony);

an obedient life, strict moral codes, and corporate discipline as appropriate expressions thereof;

the accessibility of the biblical word and rule to the awakened lay spirit;

growth in the faith through active devotions but also through education, educational programs, and literature, all adjusted to suit age, culture, and circumstance;

the importance of a witness communally shared through prayer, Bible reading, hymns, and preaching;

everyday life as a sacrament to be shaped and enlivened by a vibrant faith and expressed in holy living; and

biblical doctrine or doctrines as the light by which all this activism stays on course.

(For expressions of such experimental religion in early Methodist movements, see Sources 1760, 1773, 1775a, 1780b, 1785a, 1785b, 1785c, 1787, 1789a, 1791b, 1791c, 1798 on class meetings, and 1800b.)

Pietist emphasis on doctrine proved insufficient, careless, or imprecise to the scholastics who were typically in positions of authority and viewed themselves as consolidators of the sixteenth-century reformations. Those in power complained as well that Pietists did not measure up to what tradition had expected in zeal for the ritual or sacramental life. Opponents, therefore, found the movement's slights as objectionable as its emphases.

Protestant Pietism shaped experimental religion around the conversion experience, understood not simply as a forensic alteration in one's status with God but as a discernible inner change. In this transformation one became a reborn Nicodemus, a recreation in Christ, whose character and life manifested a new identity in fruits of the Spirit. Pietism resourced those reborn and those seeking rebirth in small groups that encouraged members to make the Scripture normative for everyday life, that sheltered individuals and families from the world, and that empowered them to counter its claims and demands. In and through such conventicles, little churches within the church, collegia pietatis, laity (male and female) gained voice and exercised leadership, a challenge and threat to public and religious conventions. Pietism drew such leadership into active missionary endeavor at home and abroad. It extended the gospel and invitation into Christian community to populations previously ignored or over previously insurmountable confessional barriers. And wherever it prospered, it challenged those who had settled for formal, notional, legal, or outward religiosity and repudiated the easy compromise that religion had made with status, wealth, power, display, and prerogative. Against such worldliness, Pietists invoked the witness of the prophets and the teaching of Jesus. In such worldliness, Pietism discerned the sin or sins that separated individuals from God. In particular, Pietism offered a prophetic critique of established, more priestly, and unregenerate forms of Christianity and leaders so characterized. Though it sought reform, it eschewed polemics and sought the widest possible unity among likeminded persons. The several resources that Pietism offered—new identity, community voluntarily created, a competitive missionary spirit, courage to persist despite society's disdain, willingness to forge new alliances—proved highly functional in the new American environment.

Pietism provided a new way of life for its adherents and motivation to tackle society's ills. It spoke of corruption, of power, of authority, of legitimacy. By identifying the corrupt—the luxury of gentility or laxness of clergy—it broke social conventions of deference and passive obedience. It did not, however, weave these elements of social critique into a program for systemic reform or a theory of new world order or a vision of the godly state or even of the church as an anticipation thereof. Such a civil or societal theology, as offered by Puritans and other Calvinists, had brought chaos to Europe. Pietists, though highly communal on a local level and creatively productive of new ecclesial institutions, would work their transformations from the bottom up rather than the top down. Renewal would start with the conversion experience rather than parliamentary act, with a conventicle rather than a reform program, with missionary outreach rather than armed insurrection.

That beginning point for change has earned for Pietism labels of individualistic, moralistic, and otherworldly. And certainly by contrast to Puritanism, Pietism offered a social ethic unwedded to a theory of the state and strategies for reform. Yet some who felt Pietism's denunciation of worldliness found it radically transformative. Others experienced it as socially revolutionary. Many denounced it as tasteless. Where it prevailed, Pietism had the capacity to shape society and culture. The transmission of this culture then became a communal and preeminently a family project, permitting and requiring vital roles for women as well as men. In the eighteenth and particularly in the nineteenth century, women involved themselves on behalf of revival—within families, nurturing the piety of spouse, children, and servants; in congregations, through prayer groups and Sunday schools; and outward into community, nation, and world through mission, benevolent, and reform societies. Pietism lowered the gateway into ministry and raised the expectations of laity, thereby drawing women as well as men, blacks as well as whites into public witness, lay preaching, and eventually formal ministry.

Pietism made religion a communal endeavor. And when it wedded itself to republicanism—which offered a rather more civil and systemic theory of corruption, of power, of authority, of legitimacy—Pietism readily took up the agenda of Puritanism. It would Christianize America and the world, albeit with the procedure of conversion and revival. But this wedding, achieved during the Second Great Awakening and through the emergence of popular denominations, and the ambivalences and tensions it produced lie ahead. At this point, we look at the entry of Methodist forms of Pietism into the New World.

Colonial Inroads

Pietism came into American life through many channels. One collective identification of these diverse channels was subsequently termed the First Great Awakening, a several-decade effervescence of heart religion, revived discipline, revivalistic preaching, and mass conversions, successively disturbing the religious status quo in the middle, New England, and southern colonies. Though such activity brought ministers from various confessions or denominations into local or regional prominence, the actors who achieved transcolony reputations were Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) and George White-field (1714–70).³ The latter, by his six evangelistic tours, 1738–70, gave the seaboard colonies a good exposure to Calvinistic Pietism and Calvinistic Methodism. He popularized and legitimated patterns of extemporaneous, expressive, open-air preaching. He showed the power of itinerant evangelists to stir conversions among diverse peoples and across confessional lines. He made theatrical revivalism the prototypical American religious style. He pioneered in promotion, self-promotion, and use of the press, all for evangelistic purpose. And Whitefield gave Methodism its first American hearing (Sources 1768). Many who found their way into the Wesleyan orbit had been affected by Whitefield's preaching. Some of his converts provided key leadership to early classes and societies, notably Edward Evans and James Emerson in Philadelphia. And White-field issued an early call to John Wesley to send itinerants.

Whitefield's role and salience as Methodism's colonial herald contrast with those of the Wesleys, John and Charles, whose efforts in Georgia (1736–37) left little in the way of continuing Methodist influence and some considerable embarrassment. The Georgia episode evidenced more of the Wesleys' Anglo-Catholic piety than of their Pietism. Only after his return from Georgia, it should be noted, did John become involved with the Moravian-led Fetter Lane Society, undergo his Aldersgate experience, and make his visit to the Moravian headquarters at Herrnhut. The Georgia mission left its enduring and important effect in John Wesley's own development. It established for Wesley and within Methodism concern for the well-being and evangelization of Native Americans and African Americans. And it came to belong to the longer story of American Methodism through its literary placement in the Wesley saga as the second rise of Methodism.⁴ By other routes the leaven of Pietism and the Methodist versions thereof came to the colonies.

Otterbein and Boehm

William Otterbein belonged to a family of pastor-theologians steeped in the German Reformed tradition and the Pietism of their native Herborn. Confessional, churchly, apologetic, orthodox, covenantal, and christocentric, Herborn Pietists grounded the religious life in doctrine and Scripture as read through the Heidelberg Catechism. This sixteenth-century ecumenical, pastoral, personal compilation guided Herborn Pietists to a life lived in the Spirit. It mapped the spiritual life as a pathway, ladder, or series of steps toward salvation and as followed under and directed by covenant. Herborn kept its counsel understandable, attainable, and practical, and accented the Christian's ability to live a holy life.⁵

Like his five brothers and father, William studied at the Reformed university at Herborn, a nursery of Pietism, where recognition of his abilities earned him a teaching role as tutor. He passed ordination examinations, subscribed to the Reformed confessions, and was ordained (1749). He served for three years in Germany, demonstrating early his ability as a teacher, preacher, and pastor. His organizing of Bible and prayer groups earned Otterbein a formal reprimand from authorities for holding such divisive conventicles. He then responded to the plea for ministers made by Michael Schlatter (1716–90), leader of the Pennsylvania (Reformed) Coetus (synod or conference) and on a recruitment mission for pastors. In 1752, Otterbein aligned with Coetus and became pastor in the important Reformed community of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. There he found himself amidst the religious ferment through which churchly and Pietist groups emerged to give stability and direction to the Dutch and German settlements in the middle colonies. Otterbein served in Lancaster (1752–58) and Tulpehocken, Pennsylvania (1758–60); Frederick, Maryland (1760–65); York, Pennsylvania (1765–74); and Baltimore, Maryland (1774–1813), but consistently itinerated to preach to German communities in southeastern Pennsylvania and northern Maryland, while continuing to play leadership roles within the Coetus (which was related to the Amsterdam Classis). Otterbein exercised episcopal-like leadership among the Pietist Germans comparable, argues J. Steven O'Malley, to that provided by Theodorus Frelinghuysen for the Dutch—that of identifying, nurturing, ordering, and deploying like-minded preachers.⁶

In 1755 Otterbein experienced a more perfect consciousness of salvation in Christ (conversion experience) and redoubled his efforts to hold himself and his congregants to a covenanted and disciplined life through prayer and Bible groups. Otterbein's evangelical Pietist convictions radiate through the little gospel he preached in 1760 in Germantown before the Coetus (Sources 1760). In it, Otterbein detailed the human plight of sin and death, the good news of Christ's victory through the cross, the imperative of human response to God's gracious atoning act and of inner struggling to permit the Spirit to destroy the Satan within, the possibility of reaching assurance of one's new standing, and the life of holiness that Christ-in-us thereby makes possible and necessary. His call for repentance and summing up of the Christian way as one of denial, inward renewal, and holiness made clear to hearers and readers that Otterbein taught Reformed doctrine that eschewed hyper-Calvinist notions of predestination and made a significant place for human volition and responsibility. The same effort and discipline, insisted Otterbein, should inform the corporate life of the Christian community, much needed amidst the moral confusion characteristic of new communities. He therefore made provision in the churches with which he worked for small prayer, for Bible study groups, for the collegia pietatis, for the catechizing and schooling of children, and for a covenant to order the entire community. An example of the latter is The Constitution and Ordinances of The Evangelical Reformed Church of Baltimore (Sources 1785b).⁷

During Otterbein's ministry in York and on one of his itinerations, he attended a great meeting near Neffsville in Lancaster County.⁸ The event, perhaps in 1767, a several-day ingathering, anticipatory of the later camp meetings, had been common in the colonial German community since the early 1720s (the site was Long's Barn, a UMC Heritage Landmark).⁹ The leader at this event was Martin Boehm (1725–1812), a Mennonite preacher whose evangelistic style, personal religious experience, and insistence on assurance resembled those of Otterbein. After hearing Boehm, Otterbein embraced him, announcing, Wir sind Bruder! Thus began an association that would eventuate in the United Brethren in Christ.

Boehm, a Swiss-German Mennonite, had been selected by lot as preacher in the late 1750s and made bishop in 1761 by his Lancaster County congregation. A farmer, Boehm received his training, not in the university like Otterbein, but through the traditioning of the Mennonite community. Believer's baptism, opposition to oaths and violence, a life lived out of the New Testament, and personal assurance through the Spirit defined Boehm. Like Otterbein, he itinerated, responding to pleas from Mennonite communities in Pennsylvania and Virginia. His evangelistic efforts yielded revival among the Mennonites but also controversy. Sometime in the late 1770s a Mennonite conference excommunicated him. Among its findings were sins of association and of insufficient stress on the sacraments. Boehm had wandered into patterns of expansive revivalism unsettling to more traditional Mennonites. Boehm's example and influence drew colleagues as well as adherents, and the movement gravitated into increasing contact with those of Otterbein and of early Methodism.

The further association of the communities around Otterbein and Boehm into protodenominational and denominational organization we will cover in chapter 4, but here we exhibit through the following historical statement from its Discipline the United Brethren's understanding of its beginnings.

Of the Origin of the United Brethren in Christ

In the century last past it pleased the Lord our God, to awaken persons in different parts of the world, who should raise up the Christian religion from its fallen state, and preach the gospel of Christ crucified in its purity.

At this time the Lord in mercy remembered the Germans in America, who, living scattered in this extensive country, had but seldom an opportunity to hear the gospel of a crucified Saviour preached to them in their native language.

Amongst others he raised up an Otterbein, a Boehm, and a Guething, armed them with spirit, grace and strength, to labour in his neglected vineyard, and call, also, amongst the Germans in America, sinners to repentance. These men obeyed the call of their Lord and Master; their labours were blessed; they established in many places excellent societies, and led many a precious soul to Jesus Christ. Their sphere of action spread itself more and more, so that they found it necessary to look about for more fellow labourers in the vineyard; for the harvest was great, and the labourers but few. The Lord called others, who also were willing to devote their strength to his service; such, then, were accepted by one or other of the preachers, as fellow labourers.

The number of members of the society, in the different parts of the country, continued from time to time to increase, and the gracious work spread itself through the states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Great meetings were appointed and held annually several times; when, on such occasions, Otterbein would hold particular conversations with the preachers then present; represent to them the importance of the ministry, and the necessity of their utmost endeavours to save souls. At one of these conversations, it was resolved to hold a conference of all the preachers, in order to take into consideration, how, and in what manner they might be most useful.

The first conference was accordingly held in Baltimore, in the year 1789. There were present:

The second conference was held in York county, in Paradise township, at the house of brother Spangler, in the year 1791, where there were present the following persons, viz.

And after mature deliberation, how they might labour most usefully in the vineyard of the Lord, they again appointed such as fellow labourers, of whom they had cause to believe that they had experienced true religion in their own souls.

In the mean time the number of members continued to increase more and more; the preachers therefore were obliged to appoint an annual conference, in order to unite themselves more closely, and labour most usefully to one common end; for some were Presbyterians, or church Reformed, some were Lutherans, others Mennonites, and yet others were Methodists. They, therefore, appointed a conference to be held the 25th of September 1800, in Frederick County, Maryland, at the house of brother Frederick Kemp. There were present as follows:

They united themselves into a society, which bears the name of The United Brethren in Christ; and elected William Otterbein and Martin Boehm, as superintendents or bishops, and agreed that each of them should be at liberty to baptise in such manner, as should best accord with his conviction.

From this time forth the society increased still more; preachers were appointed, who travelled continually (because the number of preaching places could in no other wise be attended), and the work spread itself into the states of Ohio and Kentucky. It became necessary therefore to appoint a conference in the state of Ohio, because it was conceived too laborious for the preachers, who labored in those states, to travel such a distance annually to the conference.

In the mean time brothers Boehm and Guething died, and brother Otterbein desired, that another bishop should be elected (because infirmity and age would not permit him to superintend any longer), who should take charge of the society, and preserve discipline and order; for at a conference formerly held, it was resolved, that whenever one of the bishops die, another should be elected in his place. Therefore brother Christian Newcomer was then elected as bishop, to take charge of the superintendence of the society.

The want of a discipline in the society has long since been deeply felt; and partial attempts thereto having at different times been made, it was at length resolved at the conference in the state of Ohio, that a general conference should be held, who should take upon themselves to complete the same, so as to accord with the word of God. The members of this conference were to be elected from amongst the preachers in the different parts of the country, by a majority of the votes of the members of the society; and there were present at the conference, that were duly elected, the following preachers, namely: Christian Newcomer, Abraham Hiestand, Andrew Zeller, Daniel Treyer, George Benedum, Abraham Tracksel, Christian Berger, Abraham Meyer, John Schneider, Henry Kumler, Henry Spade, Isaac Nighswander, Christian Krum, and Jacob Baulus.

These met on the sixth of June, 1815, near Mountpleasant, Westmoreland county, Penn. where they, after mature deliberation, found it to be necessary, good and beneficial to deliver the following Doctrines and Rules of discipline to the society in love and humility, with the sincere desire, that these doctrines and rules together with the Word of God might be attended to and strictly observed. For God is a God of order, and where there is no order and discipline, there all love and communion will be lost. Therefore, let us attend to the counsel of our Lord, who taught us: That in lowliness of mind, we should esteem each other better than ourselves. Seek to be minded as Jesus Christ also was! Who took upon him the form of a servant, and became obedient even unto death of the cross, to obtain for us grace and strength, that we, from motives of love and humility, might submit one to the other. He who cannot submit himself, the same lacketh grace, love and humility; hence Jesus saith: Whoso amongst you shall desire to be the greatest, shall be the other's servant. If then we are to be the servants of each other, we must love one another. Jesus saith: Thus shall all men know that ye are my true disciples, if ye have love to one another: and whoso hath not love, the same continueth in death. Then let us practise love, that we may enjoy the glory and felicity, which Jesus obtained by prayer for his disciples, of his heavenly father, that we may be one even as he and the father are one. Therefore, beloved brethren, let us strive to be likeminded, unanimous and concordant; and no one speak or think evil of the other: but implore the Lord, that he would graciously grant us his spirit and an earnest desire to lead a truly Christian life, to the honour and glory of his holy name, and to our own eternal welfare. Amen.¹⁰

Methodist Beginnings in America

Similar spontaneous initiatives established small communities that identified themselves with the Wesleyan movement. To term them spontaneous is to locate them alongside other evangelical impulses within the English-speaking orbit and with the Great Awakening generally. It is also to indicate that these beginnings occurred through what Dee Andrews calls Wesleyan migration to the greater middle Atlantic¹¹ rather than through Wesley's design or appointment. And it is to recognize these as lay endeavors, created out of the religious experience of Methodism's folk and out of their need for the identity and community-forming resources of Pietism.¹² The absence of an official commissioning makes the actual beginnings of Methodism tricky to specify, one reason for a long-standing and ongoing bragging-rights-contest between New York and Baltimore Methodists concerning priority. As early as 1787, the Discipline found a way of finessing the question of priority and adopted the phrase About the same Time to date the beginnings of Methodism around Barbara Heck and Philip Embury in New York City and Robert and Elizabeth Strawbridge in Frederick County, Maryland.

Of the Rise of Methodism (so called) in Europe and America

Quest. 1. What was the Rise of Methodism, so called, in Europe?

Answ. In 1729, two young Men, reading the Bible, saw they could not be saved without Holiness, followed after it, and incited others so to do. In 1737, they saw likewise, that Men are justified before they are sanctified: but still Holiness was their Object. God then thrust them out, to raise an holy People.

Quest. 2. What was the Rise of Methodism, so called, in America?

Answ. During the Space of thirty Years past, certain Persons, Members of the Society, emigrated from England and Ireland, and settled in various Parts of this Country. About twenty Years ago, Philip Embury, a local Preacher from Ireland, began to preach in the City of New-York, and formed a Society of his own Countrymen and the Citizens. About the same Time, Robert Strawbridge, a local Preacher from Ireland, settled in Frederick County, in the State of Maryland, and preaching there formed some Societies. In 1769, Richard Boardman and Joseph Pilmoor, came to New-York; who were the first regular Methodist Preachers on the Continent. In the latter End of the Year 1771, Francis Asbury and Richard Wright, of the same Order, came over.

Quest. 3. What may we reasonably believe to be God's Design, in raising up the Preachers called Methodists?

Answ. To reform the Continent, and spread scripture Holiness over these Lands. As a Proof hereof, we have seen in the Course of fifteen Years a great and glorious Work of God, from New-York through the Jersies, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, even to Georgia.¹³

Both the New York and the Maryland ventures date to the mid-1760s, both involved important female as well as male initiatives,¹⁴ both drew in black as well as white converts, both expressed the aspiration of immigrants for the order and community construction that Pietism provided, and both involved Irish immigrants. In the former case, the community twice exiled itself, from the Palatinate (Germany) and then from Ireland. Here, as for the Reformed and Mennonites, religious community solidified around and gave expression to ethnic identity (Irish and Irish-Palatine).

Early Leaders

Strawbridge (ca. 1732–81), a local preacher before emigrating, began preaching and established, with the help of his wife, Elizabeth, a Methodist class in their home in Sam's Creek and subsequently erected there a log meeting house.¹⁵ Elizabeth gained the first convert, John Evans, who became the class leader. Robert Strawbridge itinerated in Maryland, both Eastern and Western Shores, in Virginia, and into Pennsylvania. He established classes that became the nucleus of later societies in Baltimore, Georgetown, Washington, D.C., and Leesburg. Preachers converted by him included Black Americans, like Jacob Toogood; notable white leaders of the Methodist movement William Watters and Freeborn Garrettson; and many of the early local preachers, including Richard Owens, Hezekiah Bonham, Sater Stevenson, and Richard Webster.

Pietist and revivalistic movements contain both a self-authorizing principle—the conversion-produced confidence in the leading of the Spirit—and a prophetic edge—the courage to repudiate authority not similarly led. Lacking constraints on his exercise of the religious office, Strawbridge, though not ordained, began to baptize as early as 1762/63 and eventually to offer the Lord's Supper, both sacraments undertaken out of a sense of mission to his new flock and to their needs. No plea apparently issued from the Strawbridge connection for Wesley to send over preachers, to provide for ordinations, or to spread his wing over their efforts. Indeed, initially cooperative with Wesley's early missionaries, Strawbridge resisted their efforts to bring him and his circles into conformity, thus showing something of the Irish spirit that he and others built into the foundations of Methodism.

New York Methodism took another course and issued a plea for Wesley's ordering of and provisioning for its life (Sources 1768). Thomas Taylor, who wrote John Wesley, sought legal guidance on how to establish societies in accordance with the Wesleyan scheme, monetary assistance, and an able, experienced preacher—one who has both gifts and graces necessary for the work. Of great importance also was his immediate and firsthand description of New York Methodism. As for Sam's Creek, some developments in the spontaneous, lay-led beginnings of what would be John Street Church come down to us via later accounts and legends. Several families of Palatine immigrants, including some who had associated with the Methodists in Ireland, settled in among the New York Lutheran community, associated with Trinity Lutheran, and offered their children for baptism. Barbara Ruckle Heck enjoys credit for initiating New York Methodism. She found members of her family trivializing the time by playing cards, swept the cards into the fire, and implored her cousin Philip Embury, who had been a class leader and local preacher in Ireland: Philip, you must preach to us, or shall we all go to hell together, and God will require our blood at your hands! He complied in his own room with five auditors, including two servants, one a Black woman named Betty. A class was formed, and with continued preaching the members outgrew Embury's room and moved to a rigging loft.

Onto this small Methodist community in 1767 stumbled Captain Thomas Webb, whose impact—preaching in his scarlet regimentals with green patch over an eye—and whose doctrine Thomas Taylor detailed in the importuning letter of 1768 to John Wesley (Sources 1768). Webb (1725–96) saw military service in the colonies in the Seven Years' War (French and Indian War), lost an eye, married, became barrack master at Albany, returned to England to sell his commission, underwent conversion, gravitated into the Methodist orbit, did some preaching, returned to Albany, and there began preaching and conducting meetings. In 1766 he relocated with his wife to Jamaica, New York, and began preaching there, elsewhere on Long Island, and in the city. His efforts at home converted two dozen, over half of them African Americans. Where he met success, he established classes in true Wesleyan fashion.

After associating with Embury, he encouraged the New Yorkers in plans to buy land and build a preaching house, providing the largest donation himself (thirty pounds) and raising a comparable amount. They purchased a lot on John Street, thus beginning Methodism's presence in that now historic site, and Embury preached in the building on October 30, 1786, declaring that the best dedication of the church a minister could make was to preach in it a faithful sermon. One trip by Webb for funds took him to Philadelphia, where he encountered another small group, a legacy of Whitefield's efforts, and organized and developed what would become St. George's. Two years later, the first two of Wesley's appointees, Richard Boardman and Joseph Pilmore, were able to encourage the hundred or so Methodists into acquiring an unfinished German Reformed property. On November 26, 1769, Webb preached the inaugural Sunday sermon.

Like Otterbein, Boehm, and Strawbridge, Webb itinerated widely to preach and to organize. Frank Baker calls him a consolidator, a term that nicely captures the initiatives he undertook and the fact that he made contact with religious communities already in the process of formation. His efforts, nevertheless, have seemed key to Methodist beginnings at Albany and Schenectady, on Long Island, in the Philadelphia area (Chester and Bristol), in New Jersey (Trenton, Burlington, and New Mills), and in Delaware (Wilmington and New Castle). Everywhere he convinced his fellow sinners of sin, offered free and universal grace, taught the divinity and coeternity of Son and Spirit with the Father, grounded hope on Christ's tasting death for everyone, insisted that sinners were justified by faith alone, but that grace could be resisted or lost, and pointed believers toward the holiness that the Spirit made possible.¹⁶

Another individual operating on his own initiative and authority was Robert Williams (ca. 1745–75), a Welsh local preacher who had preached effectively in northern Ireland. He offered himself for the colonies after Taylor's appeal for assistance (Sources 1768) and when Wesley had begun to seek volunteers for America. Wesley allowed him to come at his own expense and with the understanding that he would be accountable to Wesley's officially commissioned missionaries. Williams apparently intended, from the start, to publish and sell Methodist materials, an enterprise already underway when Wesley's appointees, Boardman and Pilmore, arrived. Williams had also taken charge in New York and itinerated as far south as Virginia.

Letters like Taylor's requesting help and efforts like Webb's and Williams's connecting existing small beginnings began the process by which spontaneous efforts found the authority of Wesley and the British movement. And much of the subsequent story readily and naturally navigates onto national, formal, organizational, and leadership levels and easily comes to focus around Francis Asbury and colleagues. However, we should not lose sight of the spontaneity—the initiatives of the Methodist folk, female and male, black and white, English and German-speaking, who in new community after new community would lay the foundations on which the record-keeping preachers would build. The Emburys and Hecks did so more than once. They soon moved on into upper New York and thence into what is now Ontario, there to participate in the constituting of Canadian Methodism.¹⁷ Such spontaneous beginnings exhibited, as Andrews notes, the imperatives of Wesleyan Methodism—missionary drive, cross-denominational appeal, enthusiastic preaching, and household recruitment of followers.¹⁸

Pietist Communities

These imperatives, actually Pietist imperatives generally, brought individuals into face-to-face, family-like communities, but families without established heads, without formal structure, with little literature other than the Bible, with little purpose beyond themselves, connected to no larger ecclesial authorities, lacking clarity about norms, ritual, belief, and practices. These families, in short, lacked legitimacy. Such communities might cry out for a leader of wisdom, of sound faith, and a good disciplinarian only to find themselves yielding grudgingly the family-like atmosphere that informality had afforded. Ordering of spontaneous Pietist communities would not be conflict free.

CHAPTER II

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STRUCTURING THE IMMIGRANT INITIATIVES:

1769–78

When I came to Philadelphia I found a little Society, and preached to a great number of people (Sources 1769). So reported Richard Boardman, who, with Joseph Pilmore, composed the first of four pairs of preachers sent by John Wesley to the colonies. Francis Asbury and Richard Wright followed in 1771, Thomas Rankin and George Shadford in 1773, and James Dempster and Martin Rodda in 1774. Several preachers came to the colonies on their own, including John King, Joseph Yearbry, and William Glendenning. Wesley's itinerants came to bring order to Pietist ferment.

Occupying Canaan under Wesleyan Order

Joseph Pilmore (1739–1825), who had been educated at Wesley's Kingswood School near Bristol, followed Wesley's precept and example by keeping a journal, as also would Francis Asbury, Thomas Rankin, Thomas Coke, and many other itinerants. On landing, October 22, 1769, Pilmore noted that they encountered Captain Webb, a real Methodist, and discovered the Philadelphia society. Boardman preached, the next day, on the call of Abraham to go forth into the Land of Canaan. Boardman, the senior of the two and Wesley's assistant for America, proclaimed what would be, and truth be told continues to this day to be, the wandering Arminian's as it was the wandering Aramean's presumption. Methodists should claim, occupy, and if necessary, conquer this new Canaan, this land of heathens. O may he now give his Son the heathen for his inheritance, writes Boardman. However, as his sketchy report to Wesley indicated, Boardman found chosen people (Methodists) already in Canaan and receptive to the Methodist message—eager hearers, both black and white, civilian and military (Sources 1769). Methodist itinerants functioned with biblical self-images of themselves as Abrahams or Pauls and so crafted their journals. A more accurate biblical type might have been Ezra or Nehemiah. Itinerants did more rebuilding walls, restoring temples, renewing covenant, and less occupying new ground or opening the gospel than they thought. Pilmore wrote Wesley and expressed surprise to find Captain Webb in town, and a society of about one hundred members, who desire to be in close connection with you.¹

So thinking themselves Abrahams or Pauls, Pilmore and Boardman went about the work of Ezra and Nehemiah. That meant rebuilding on the Wesleyan system—preaching in the open air, itinerating on a planned basis, making and meeting appointments, inviting into connection all of any confession who would flee the wrath to come, admitting the same as probationers, organizing classes, holding love feasts, maintaining the society's boundaries, establishing circuits, and cultivating good relations with the churches and their clergy. Implementing the Wesleyan system meant also discerning those who could serve in key leadership posts—steward, class leader, exhorter, local preacher—and appointing them to these key local posts.²

Two weeks after arriving, Pilmore read and explained the Rules of the Society to a vast multitude of serious people. In late November, he cooperated with Webb in acquiring a shell of a building from the Dutch Presbyterians (German Reformed), St. George's, since 1968 an officially designated Heritage Landmark of United Methodism. Ten days later, Pilmore laid out the Wesleyan order to the Philadelphia society, distilling the General Rules into an eight-point program:

That the Methodist Society was never designed to make a Separation from the Church of England or be looked upon as a Church.

That it was at first and is still intended for the benefit of all those of every Denomination who being truly convinced of sin, and the danger they are exposed to, earnestly desire to flee from the wrath to come.

That any person who is so convinced, and desires admittance into the Society, will readily be received as a probationer.

That those who walk according to the Oracles of God, and thereby give proof [of] their sincerity, will readily be admitted into full connexion with the Methodists.

That if any person or persons in the Society, walk disorderly, and transgress the holy Laws of God, we will admonish him of his error—we will strive to restore him in the spirit of meekness—we will bear with him for a time, but if he remain incorrigible and impenitent, we must then of necessity inform him, he is no longer a member of the Society.

That the Church now purchased, is for the use of this Society, for the Public Worship of Almighty God.

That a subscription will immediately be set on foot to defray